Five Months

Sweet little Mary is five months old as of last Wednesday.

She continues to improve her rolling, sitting, and standing skills. She can sit by herself in her highchair and loves joining us for meal times. 

One of her favorite things right now is when Daddy lifts her up in the air over his head; she stretches out her little body with a big smile and laugh. She also likes peek-a-boo and other simple games. 

 She reaches for things she finds interesting, including the animal prints on her blankets or designs on t-shirts. 

She babbles an occasional vowel/consonant combination, usually mamamamamama. 

Even without scooting yet, she is able to get around quite a bit when placed on a blanket.

 Mary loves exploring new things and is a lot of fun to be around. We are enjoying all her sweet little baby moments.

Baby Smiles

Who doesn't love some sweet baby smiles to brighten their day?!

First Highchair Time

 Mary has started sampling foods. We aren't planning to officially start her on solids until six months, but she gets to try things now and then. She sat in her highchair and wore a bib like a big girl for the first time a couple weeks ago. I don't think she cared much one way or the other about her little piece of avocado, but she sure likes sitting at the table with us.

Reedsport

 As an end of summer adventure, we went over to Reedsport for a couple days last week. We took our laptops, so we spent a lot of time working and doing things we would normally do at home, but we enjoyed the time at the coast. After dinner, we drove down to see the boats and the ocean.

 We were planning to watch the sunset, but it was too foggy to even see the sun or the ocean. So instead, we enjoyed the fog. It was beautiful and peaceful.

The following morning, after some writing and blackberry picking, we returned home.

Four Months

 Our sweet baby continues to grow! This month brought big changes as Mary has mostly mastered the skill of holding her head up. This led to her working on a whole new set of skills, like sitting up and standing with support. 

 It also means she has a lot more control on her belly and spends time holding herself up on her arms and looking around.

 

She is pretty good at sitting with assistance and likes to sit on Joshua's lap at dinner.

Her fine motor skills continue to improve as well; she can now manipulate items to stick them in her mouth, and if she misses the first time, she pulls it back to look at it before trying again. Of course, most everything she can get her hands on goes in her mouth, including her hands, her feet, our fingers, toys, burp clothes, clothing.

 She likes having her belly tickled and can laugh out loud. 

Mary continues to be a sweet and generally happy baby, and she is a great source of delight.

Fruit Picking

Some friends of ours invited us to pick apples, pears, plums, and garden produce at their house, so we had a little fruit picking adventure. It was a beautiful morning and we all enjoyed being outside.

Gayle, Mary, and I went blackberry picking a couple days later in Reedsport. She is becoming quite the little fruit picker already.

Dave and Gayle Visit

 Dave and Gayle came up to Oregon for a late-summer visit; they arrived on Monday, August 27. Mary enjoyed getting extra attention again. Joshua mixed up some delicious drinks a couple of evenings to go along with whatever game we happened to play that night. Thursday afternoon they headed over to Reedsport, and we followed Sunday morning. It was our first time there without Grandad, which was really hard. But it was a good visit.

We enjoyed watching the sunset over the ocean.

We had nice cool evenings and warm days over at the coast, including some fog. We stayed pretty busy during the days with blackberry picking and projects around the trailer. On Monday, we cut back a bunch of the bushes in the back, which included blackberry vines, yikes.

We returned to Eugene on Tuesday and enjoyed another couple of days together here, marked by particularly good food. One of the nights we had lamb, and one of the nights we had an Italian dinner. Joshua found places around town to get good ingredients to recreate some of his favorite dishes from Italy and we drank the bottle of red wine he brought back. The first course was caprese salad. It was delicious.

Our second course was prosciutto e melone. We lucked out because one of the restaurants in town recently had a proscuitto class and brought it a bunch of great options. This was also delicious.

Gayle and I went shopping on Thursday and had fun picking out some adorable clothes that she got for Mary, along with this teething key ring. Dave and Gayle left Friday morning to return home.